About
Ellen Degeneres Crying is an image macro series featuring a screenshot from a video by morning talkshow host Ellen Degeneres about the killing of Breonna Taylor. In summer 2020, many meme’d a screenshot from the video and added the caption, “When you get so high, you start getting scared.”
Origin
On June 25th, 2020, Ellen Degeneres published a video about the killing Ellen Degeneres. In the video, she says, “How are you showing up for Breonna Taylor.” The post received more than 449,000 likes in less than one year (shown below).
On August 6th, 2020, Twitter user @aksually tweeted the screenshot with the caption, “When you get so high, you start getting scared.” They also published an edited image of Degeneres holding a cannabis cigar. The post received more than 1,000 likes in less than one year (shown below, left and right).
Spread
Days later, the image began spreading online. On August 9th, 2020, Instagram user @epic.png shared the image with the caption, “What the F*ck (Fuck) happened to Eminem.” The post received more than 4,400 likes in less than six months (shown below, left).
That day, Instagram user @grapejuiceboys shared the image with the caption, “Think 2020’s been hard on you, look at what it’s done to Eminem.” The post received more than 73,000 likes in less than six months (shown below, center).
The following day, Twitter user @Struggle_Tweet shared a post from an anonymous Twitter user that captioned the image, “bought an onlyfans and she just playing piano and singing.” The tweet received more than 59,000 likes and 2,500 retweets in less than six months (shown below, center).
Various Examples
